For goodness bake! If you’ve noticed a shortage of supplies like eggs, flour, milk, yeast, and chocolate chips recently — you’re not the only one. As Canadians continue to adjust to life at home, we’ve all taken up some new hobbies. However, it seems one particular activity has become particularly popular with people isolating, and it’s the reason that many Canadian supermarkets are empty of essential supplies. Until recently, many of us had never baked a cake before, let alone divulged into the world of bread baking, cookie creating, and masterpiece making. However, due to an unprecedented amount of time at home, and a desire to do pretty much anything that doesn’t involve Zoom or Netflix, we’ve all apparently taken up baking. Collectively. While our new cooking experiments have certainly provided us with some tasty snacks, as well as some doughy disasters, they’re actually causing a shortage of essential items in major stores across Canada. In fact, items such as yeast, milk, flour, eggs, and even chocolate chips have suddenly become notoriously hard to get hold of. If that wasn’t enough, there’s also reported shortages of pasta, salt and pepper, paper towels, and dish soap. Step aside, toilet paper. Kitchen essentials just became Canada’s hottest commodity! No name German bread #germanshepherd #german #bread #breadmaking #Madeleine muffins #madeleine #madeleinemccann #cakedecorating #baking #homebaker #homemade #sweet #muffins #desert #love #canada pic.twitter.com/9wz5eRK3Fi— Yvette (@ukoz) April 6, 2020 Tried a new recipe and it’s a winner! Best bread I’ve ever made. Soft and fluffy. There will be much of this in our future 😛 pic.twitter.com/p0CU0YUNRg— Monica (@Jakiemon) April 10, 2020 Fresh no knead bread. pic.twitter.com/vRAaeLellj— Marion Greveling (@luvlambs) April 10, 2020 Warm slices of homemade bread pic.twitter.com/Zl4JsQXRvV— Sophie Dunne (@SophieD26788913) April 8, 2020 In fact, when CBC reporter Michelle Ghoussoub asked why everybody was baking bread all of a sudden, her tweet was met with countless comments and photos, about, well, people making bread! The reason we’re all suddenly baking goodies, according to a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto, actually goes deeper than just being bored. “Eating carbohydrate foods like bread stimulates insulin, which raises the uptake by the brain of the essential amino acid, tryptophan,” Harvey Anderson told The Globe and Mail. “Tryptophan in the brain increases production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that promotes calm and sleep in times of stress. So enjoy your fresh bread, just don't eat the whole loaf at one time,” the professor explained. It is a mystery. pic.twitter.com/H2JFKkGo7B— K (@bates_kl) March 21, 2020 In fact, we’re so desperate to get said serotonin, that we’re baking at unprecedented levels. Google Trend searches for the word “bread” has hit an all-time high, and similar hashtags garnered nearly half a million posts on social media channels. According to Daybreak Flour Mill in Saskatchewan, online orders have spiked so much that they’ve been forced to alter their production levels altogether, in order to keep-up with demand. In Toronto, similar things are happening. Brodflour, an urban mill and bakery, has seen a 700% increase in their flour sales. While we’re all enjoying our new carby hobby, there’s actually a downside to our obsessive baking. Google Trends | Website Google Trends | Website Since the surge in baking, which includes cakes and cookies, Canada’s grocery stores have been running extremely low on basic products. In particular, yeast, eggs, flour, and milk. While this doesn’t sound like too much of a drama — I mean we all lived through the infamous toilet paper shortage — it’s actually starting to impact small business owners. One Twitter user explained, “Professional bakers across Canada are finding it difficult to buy yeast. Businesses that actually need to bake to put food on the table.” Another person added that they’d been forced to locate yeast online, after searching for it for three weeks. They paid $65 for an amount that would usually cost just $5 in stores. Can we tone down on all the baking? Professional bakers across Canada finding it difficult to buy yeast. Businesses that actually need to bake to put food on their tables.— Mutiny⚓⚓⚓🔌🔌 (@Mutineer8961) April 8, 2020 I’m just a girl standing in front of the empty flour jar dreaming abt the cookies and doughnuts and cakes and brownies all the flour hoarders are baking while I am still flourless.— kristabellerina (@kristabellerina) April 7, 2020 Apparently flour is in short supply even in Alberta, Canada’s bread basket. My cousin, who lives somewhere so remote she cab’t help but self-isolate, went into her nearest small town and couldn’t find any! If she could just get to Deptford...— Valerie Weber (@valw53) April 10, 2020 Good luck finding yeast. I don't know who has it all, but there's none in the stores up here (Canada), and I don't trust the brands on Amazon to buy it from there. Hence, I am making my own.— ~𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖐𝖊 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖚𝖗~ (@Darke_Conteur) April 7, 2020 Potatoes was easy here in Canada. I have been looking for yeast for almost 3 weeks. I finally broke down today and bought it on eBay. Including shipping, I paid $65.00 US for 3 envelopes of yeast! They cost less than $5.00 in stores. Talk about gouging!— Iris Collier (@IrisRCollier) April 8, 2020 Idk what the us is like but Canada seems to be out of flour, sugar, yeast ... and chocolate chips!— NoMaiden (@no_maiden) April 7, 2020 Flour is still at a shortage here, and yeast is even more scarce. I thought like the toilet paper issue,that it would have been resolved by now. Everything else is in full supply, no shortages of anything else. PEI, Canada.— Donald Chisholm (@DonaldChisholm6) April 4, 2020 Thankfully, there’s an Alberta company on-hand that is doing their best to fix the country’s yeast shortage. Calgary’s AB Mauri factory is now operating at 25% over capacity, in an attempt to re-stock yeast supplies across North America. On a weekly basis, this facility’s yeast supports the making of two million loaves of bread in Alberta alone. That's a lot of sourdough! Weekly grocery run observations, from the Isabella Loblaws:- toilet paper there for the first time in three weekly visits- flour and yeast still a hot commodity, empty shelves- most dish soap gone too- only fancy eggs left- disturbing lack of Cadbury mini eggs— Eat This Town - Ottawa (@EatThisTownOtt) April 6, 2020 Breadmaking supplies are the new toilet paper. I defy any of you to find dark rye flour available in Canada right now.— Burke Libbey (@burkelibbey) April 5, 2020 In the meantime, while we wait for our local supermarket to replenish their stocks, let’s all try and cut down our baking, especially if we’re doing it several times per week. Even though it's a delicious and very addictive new hobby, there are people out there who have been looking for supplies like flour and eggs for weeks. Weeks! If you’re already stocked up, don’t buy any more baking items right now. It’s the yeast we can do.
